From Strange Maps: ‘Gingers Of The World – Unite!

Full piece here.

Even in more recent times, redheads were considered behavioural outliers – more temperamental and libidinous than ‘normal-haired’ people. A 19th-century survey ‘proved’ that 48% of so-called ‘criminal women’ (i.e. prostitutes) had red hair, to name but one now discredited example.

Poor redheads.

‘The geographic distribution of redheads across Europe is equally puzzling, as this map demonstrates. There are two ginger hotspots: the Celtic fringe of the British Isles (i.e. Scotland, Ireland and Wales), and an area deep inside Russia, somewhere between Yaroslavl and Kirov’

Are they going extinct?  Probably not.

See Also: That Sherlock Holmes case involving ‘The Red-Headed League.’


by Colin Angus Mackay

Repost: From Strange Maps: Europe’s Continental Divide

Full post here.

This is just mostly a topographic map with a watershed line, but it’s not long before you wonder how physical geography has shaped cultural, religious and linguistic traditions.

A primary factor?

…in military strategy maybe…or trade routes?

Language seemed to be a primary factor in the Protestant Reformation.

Related On This Site:  From Strange Maps: The Sweet Tea Line In VirginiaFrom Strange Maps: Do You Say Soda, Pop, or Coke?

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From Strange Maps: America’s Mean Streak

Full post here.

You can plot Americans’ move westward.

“The mean centre of US population is “the point at which an imaginary, flat, weightless and rigid map of the US would balance perfectly if weights of identical value were placed on it so that each weight represented the location of one person on the date of the census”, in the definition of the US Census Bureau itself.”

See Also:  From Strange Maps: The Sweet Tea Line In Virginia…Edward Hopper: Railroad Sunset

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From Strange Maps: It’s All Greek To Me

Full post here.

The map itself isn’t so impressive, but it’s an interesting thought.  Someone made a cartogram of many different languages’ point of reference to other languages as ones that seem unintelligible.  

“Mutual incomprehension results from the right mixture of inter-lingual proximity and unintelligibility. In the Middle Ages, for example, when the monks’ knowledge of Greek was waning, they would write in the margin of texts they could not translate, in Latin: “Graecum est, non legitur” (”This is Greek to me, I can’t read it”).”

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